Arrival

Then one day they came. Like dragonflies in the sky. 

It wasn't like in the movies. The alien invasion stories were not predictive programming. 

There were 144 ships in the first flock. The first observation was made by an amateur astronomer on one of the Yaeyama Islands. It was designated 2041VR. 

2041XA came a couple of days later, from an observatory in the Southwestern U.S., identified as the same new asteroid classification as 2041VR, the Yaeyama-types. The two asteroids exhibited novel patterns of movements, were entering the solar system at an extend inclination and at speeds that had been double and triple checked for error because they appeared so fantastical. So fast they shouldn't have been seen, not by amateur astronomers anyway.

The online rumors about an alien invasion force started right away. Astronomers weren't sure what they were looking at, but once they knew what they were looking for they found the other 142.

It appeared the asteroids were passing through the outer solar system, their trajectory bending to the Sun's gravity around the orbit of Neptune. 

When they were spotted far closer, the online speculation grew more fevered. The aliens were finally coming, or the interdimensional beings. Someone to save us from the lizard people. 

Or it was a government hoax, a ploy by one or a number of the world governments for a one world government. 

The stuff of pre-existing contemporary mythology. Whether conspiracy theory or pop culture or something in between. Everything is in between. 

But it had not been a ploy by any of the world governments. They didn't have the resources for such a hoax. Neither did anyone in the non-government or private sector. Nor were any of the governments equipped to handle such a scenario. 

The Declaration of Principles Concerning Activities Following the Detection of Extraterrestrial Intelligence, put together when the search for extraterrestrial intelligence began generations earlier, proved mostly useless. 

It might have done a good job grappling with the news of intelligent life, maybe even a signal from it, but not an actual arrival. The distances were simply too great for such a scenario that the Earth had now been facing to be plausible. 

And yet. Eventually there they were. They took geostationary positions within the orbit of the moon but beyond Earth's artificial satellites.

The dragonfly shape and metallic luster identified them immediately as artificial. That weren't a new class of asteroids and they weren't interdimensional beings either. Everyone knew those would come through portals not engineering. 

The ships, and that's what the dragonflies were, remained in the sky, all 144 of them, in a dozen clusters somewhat evenly distributed over the hemisphere, for three days.

Attempts at communication by government and non-government scientists were futile. Though many of the world's governments at the time had adopted jingoistic rhetoric, none could muster anything but bluster about repelling the alien visitors. 

And then two of the dragonflies descended. One went to Central Park and the other went to Antarctica.